him to combine the best elements of Kant-
ianism and contractualism: "Everyone
ought to follow the principles whose uni-
versal acceptance everyone could rationally
will." He argued that these principles
would be the same ones that were es-
poused by rule consequentialism. Then, at
last, he was in a position to propose his
top-of-the-mountain formula, which he
called the Triple Theory:
An act is wrong just when such acts are dis-
allowed by some principle that is optimific,
uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably
rejectable.
The theory's principles were consequen-
tialist because they would lead to the best
results (optimific); Kantian because they
were universally willable; and contractual-
ist because no person could reasonably re-
ject them.
Parfitwantedhis book to be as close to
perfect as it could possibly be. He wanted
to have answered every conceivable objec-
tion. To this end, he sent his manuscript
to practically every philosopher he knew,
asking for criticisms, and more than two
hundred and fifty sent him comments.
He labored for years to :fix every error. As
he corrected his mistakes and clarified his
arguments, the book grew longer. He had
originally conceived of it as a short book;
it became a long book, and then a very
long book supplemented by an even lon-
ger book-fourteen hundred pages in all.
People began to wonder ifhe would ever
finish.
With his Triple Theory, Parfit believed
that he had achieved convergence between
three of the main schools of moral thought,
but even this didn't satisfY him. There were
still major philosophers outstanding whom
he admired but whose views disturbed
him. He marshalled every possible argu-
ment, however quixotic, to prove that what
appeared to be irreconcilable differences
were merely errors of lit de significance.
When Hume claims. .. that such preferences are
not contrary to reason, he is forgetting, or mis-
stating, his normative beliefs. We should distin-
guish between Hume's stated view and his real
VIew.
Though Nietzsche makes some normative
claims that most of us would strongly reject,
some of these claims are not wholly sane, and
others depend on ignorance or false beliefs
about the relevant non-normative facts. And
Nietzsche often disagrees with himself.
There were so many facts we did not yet
know, Parfit felt, so many distorting
influences of which we were not yet
aware, and it was always so easy to make
mistakes. However hopeless the situa-
tion might appear, it seemed to him
that, in the end, humans converged to-
ward moral progress.
, ]{ Jhen Parfit was young, one of the
V V most dazzling figures on the
philosophical scene was Bernard Wil-
liams. Williams was thirteen years older
than Parfit and already had a formida-
ble reputation. He was urbane, seduc-
tive, and witty-he was famous for his
eviscerating put-downs and scathing
repartee. He acknowledged the origi-
nality of Parfit's work, but, socially, he
was dismissive. Williams was a club
man, a college man, full of High Table
bonhomie; Parfit would gobble his din-
ner and, while other fellows met for
brandies, dessert, and cigars, he would
hurry back to his room.
Williams lived a rich, worldly life.
He had flown Spitfires in the Air Force.
He had lived for years in a large house
in London with his first wife, the poli-
tician Shirley Williams, their daughter,
and another couple. He had an affair
with another man's wife and left his wife
for her; they married and had two sons.
He sat on royal commissions and gov-
ernment committees, issuing opinions
on pornography, drug abuse, private
schools, and gambling. (He had done,
he liked to say, all the vices.) He wrote
about opera.
Williams had started out in classics, and
his thinking was formed as much by Greek
tragedy as by philosophy-he saw the
world in terms of fate, shame, and luck He
thought most moral philosophy was empty
and boring. He disdained both Kantian-
ism and consequentialism, and devoted
much of his career to destroying them.
Both required you to think impersonally,
impartially, out of duty, considering others
to be as important as yourself; but we can-
not and should not become impartial, he
argued, because doing so would mean
abandoning what gives human life mean-
ing. Without selfish partiality-to people
you are deeply attached to, your wife and
your children, your friends, to work that
you love and that is particularly yours, to
beauty, to place-we are nothing. We are
creatures of intimacy and kinship and loy-
alty, not blind servants of the world.
Ifhe had a highest value, it was authen-
ticity. To him, the self was, in the end, all
we have. But, in most cases, this wasn't
much-most people were stupid and cruel.
Williams enjoyed his life, but he was a pes-
simist of the bleakest sort. He told a stu-
dent that the last stanza of Matthew Ar-
nold's poem "Dover Beach" summed up
his view of things:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which
seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor
light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for
paIn . . .
Williams thought that meta-ethics-
questions about the existence and nature of
moral truths-was especially pointless.
The idea of moral truth was a delusion, he
thought-the fantasy of an "argument that
will stop them in their tracks when they
come to take you away." Philosophy was an
art, not a science, an enterprise not of dis-
covery but of conflict. Williams did not
propose a moral theory of his own. He was
skeptical that any such theory could be
plausible, and anyway his brilliance was
fundamentally destructive.
Parfit admired Williams more than al-
most anyone he knew. "Once, Derek
showed me a photograph of Bernard Wil-
liams when he was provost of King's Col-
lege, Cambridge," Larry Temkin says.
"Bernard was standing on the roof of
King's College with a kind of haughty,
British, aristocratic look-you know, mas-
ter of all he surveys, and all of Cambridge
was shown below in the distance. And
Derek said, 'Isn't he wonderful?' I've seen
that only once before with him, with a pic-
ture of Rudolph Nureyev. Nureyevwas in
the air, way above the ground, and he had
that look on his face-in a certain way it
was similar to the one Bernard had-he
knew, as he was floating, that he was sort
of godlike. And Derek said, 'Look at
that-isn't that just amazing?' "
Because he admired Williams so
much, it greatly distressed him that
their views were so far apart. What he
found most disturbing was Williams's
view of meta-ethics. Williams believed
that there were no objectively true an-
swers to questions of right and wrong,
or even to questions of prudence. To
him, morality was a human system that
arose from human wants and remained
dependent on them. This didn't mean
that people felt any less fiercely about
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 5, 2011 51